Due to the image created by the media and literature of the representatives of helping professions, lots of people see them as some extraordinary creatures whose only ambition is to make life better for their clients. Of course, such an image is corrupted, as health professionals are ordinary people with the motivations which don’t differ much from those of the fashion specialist or space engineer.
There are several basic motivations that guide the people’s behavior in our society, like longing for love, for power, for freedom, or for belonging and for fun. Those are the motivations for the helping professionals altogether, and when dealing with them it shouldn’t be forgotten. Of course one has to possess a special set of motivations to choose this kind of career, and they should be mixed in different proportions, but we shouldn’t idealize the helping professionals, as the ingredients of their longing to getting this profession, the basic set of motivations, is still the same.
The first and the most important my motivation for choosing the helping profession was the desire to be loved by the surroundings. This motivation is explained really easily, as I believe that people tend to treat good those, who help them. Besides, the social image of the representative of helping profession is mostly were positive, people tend to trust those, who fulfill that functions without questioning the reasons they do it for.
I’ve been always longing for love and appreciation from the side of people around me, thus I considered the helping profession to be the best choice for them. Besides, the ability to make people feel better has also been valuable for me, and helping profession offers it every day. I like to see the immediate and effective results of the job I do, and in the helping professions you look directly with the clients.
I recently found that there is a bit of the desire for power in my motivation for becoming a health professional. Human’s health is the most valuable thing he/she has, thus preserving or restoring health gives the nurse, the doctor, the physician etc a temporary persuasion that he/she is able to make their person do what they need. As for me, I like it when people listen to my directions and follow them closely, and the patients tend to listen to the advice the health and helping professionals give to them.
I see that my set of motivations may create some problems for me while achieving the high professional level, as in case those two motivations are too great, than the patient begins to suffer, as he/she becomes the object of manipulation which result in getting moral satisfaction by the health professional. I sincerely hope I will be able to control my motivation sphere for not to let it rule my actions, and guide me during my professional agency.
I have a belief that very person has to be free in their choice. As for me, the real freedom is impossible to reach when a person has problems with his or her health, as when the body is in pain or discomfort it’s very hard to resist its impulses. Thus I think that being to cope with this problem will allow me to make this patient more free and open, than he was before. It is also that I feel I like to be nice with all the people I communicate with, thus my clients will feel themselves safe, they won’t be afraid I’ll tell some angry joke, or laugh on them. As for me mocking over a person lowers his/her level of self- evaluation and dampens the development, thus I feel I won’t ever do it.
